Holding out for the best price on Amazon using camelcamelcamel price tracker

This has been around for a while but I mentioned it to a friend recently and they’d never heard of it.

The oddly named camecamelcamel website is a price-tracker specifically for Amazon. It records historical pricing on all products listed on Amazon. It can be used in two ways. The first way, is to check before you purchase an item whether you are buying at a good price or not. And the second way, is simply an extension of this: you can get the site to send you an alert when the price drops below a certain price-point. If you don’t need the item urgently, this can save you a lot of money.

How to use camelcamelcamel

Then visit camelcamelcamel and paste the copied link into the search bar at the top of the page and hit return:

Paste in camelcamelcamel

The resulting page provide a graph that provides all the information you need to make an informed decision:

Price of Amazon item over time

We can see that the typical price is around £280 (1) but the current price of £233 (2) is also the lowest, so a great time to buy! There’s also a handy summary (3) that highlights the highest and lowest price.

Setting a price watch

So based on the above results, if you were after that Go Pro camera – you might as well go ahead! But more typically the item you’re after is not at its lowest price but you’re happy to wait until it is. For example the Kindle Fire HDX 7″ tablet:

Kindle Fire HDX 7″ tablet price graph

Here we can see that just before Christmas this dropped to £119 – over a £100 cheaper than the current price. It’s very likely that Amazon will reduce this tablet again at some stage. So if there’s no rush we can set a price watch:

Setting price watch

Simply set the price you want the item to achieve before you’re notified (1), provide an email address (2) and hit start tracking (3). It’s worth noting that under price type, you’ll usually see 3rd Party and 3rd Party used. I normally ignore these since I prefer Amazon as the seller but that’s up to you.

It’s very easy and I’ve saved a fair bit over the years so give it a try! And please post any comments below.

Gidon’s obsession with technology began at an early age with a BBC B Micro computer. After working for 12 years at British Telecom travelling around the world as a technology researcher he opened a technology retail store in Tavistock in Devon, selling the latest tech and offering IT services to residential and business customers. Read More…

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